Opinion Piece: The Battle Of The Black Woman And Her Natural Hair.

By Shania LaFleur

 It’s too coarse, it’s not proper, the texture isn’t loose enough, it’s not long enough. The internal and external battle of an individual and an extension of themselves. I can chronicle my journey of self love with the journey of my hair. I was already being taught from the beginning to change this extension of myself because it was “too difficult to handle, and not pretty enough to see.” Perms, texturizer, flat ironing all ingrained from the beginning. The idea that we as black women as complex as we are, with our complex features and complex hair. We were not taught to understand it but rather to change it and fit ourselves into a box in which we are to assimilate. In which we are not to feel beautiful because without the perm or the texturizer our coarse hair that defies gravity is not considered to be beautiful. A deep rooted and subconscious misconstruction and miseducation of the mind. It is all embedded in the minds of our black women that their hair does not reflect the beauty standard. It does not fit the status quo. I know this because it’s still embedded in me. Trying to love something that is a part of me but failing miserably.

      The history of perm is like the history of all black mothers and their daughters. The miseducation of our black mothers on the versatility of our hair is such a sad truth. It’s important to display the visual infatuation you get with yourself after you’ve permed your hair. I remember being probably 6 or 8 years old. My mother permed my hair because her belief was that my hair, since it was long, the perm would just make it long and straight. Instead, it made it short and straight but I looked in the mirror and saw this transformation. The silk and easy to handle hair, the coarse and difficult hair GONE. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the mirror and the comb out my head because now a comb could actually run through it.

The factories and companies that made dolls at my age had no idea who I was. To elaborate, when they made their dolls for us young girls to play with, there was no consideration to make something that has a black woman′ s many skin tones or a display of her actual hair texture. I had the white dolls, with the blue eyes and long blonde straight silky hair. This repetitious exemption of who the black woman is, and what her identity truly looks like is even foreign in Hollywood. Black actresses complain about the lack of effort that is put in to cater to their features. Many like Kat Graham, Viola Davis, Gabrielle Union venting about there not being hairstylists that know how to deal with a black woman’s hair and how there is no effort put forth to try and employ hairstylists that have the understanding of black women’s hair. And this is all because the features and the hair of a black woman is not “marketable.” So why cater to it if it’s not what we′re looking for and why consider catering to it if we can change it. And this falsified ideology that is spoon fed into society is even being bluntly spoken out by our own black men. The black men whom, we felt had our backs on any commentary about our hair or features but instead many have indulged not all many. And the irony is that the same Afrocentric features that amuse them or that they call out are the same features possessed by the women they call their mothers. 

Image from GettyImages

 I know it′s not the world’s responsibility to see the black woman’s hair but we demand that it be respected. You don’t have to see it as beautiful because we have now established a community within ourselves in which we share the struggle of taking care of it, in which we revel in the versatility of it, how we can turn it into locs, braids, make it longer, make it curlier and even straighten it because only our hair has the capability to do so, to maneuver back and forth, to transform and be new. And we have formed a community in which we defend it. My Afro textured hair is refreshing and the aesthetic unique. I′m learning to embrace it and I’m not quite there yet. But when I see black women in close proximity embracing their hair it gives me a sense of inspiration and temerity.

May 23, 2022

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